[Fwd: Re: [Peace-discuss] The End of the Road for George W. Bush...(?)]

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

Hedges' moralistic frenzy seems to have got the best of him, just as it 
did when he insisted that anti-Darwinians threaten us with fascism.  It 
leads him here to mistake Bush Jr. for a cause rather than a symptom of 
US imperialism.

It may indeed be "the end of the road" for GWB, but only because the 
policy that his administration followed and is following in the ME is 
essentially continuous with that of the preceding (and probably 
following) administration, and it is unlikely that there will be any 
major changes in it.  The US will continue to insist on controlling ME 
energy resources as a strangle-hold on its real economic competitors, 
Europe and NE Asia, both vast oil importers.

The dangerousness of the current administration was an artefact of the 
9/11/2001 attacks and the coming to power of an extreme end of the US 
foreign policy spectrum, who still exist as a war party within this 
administration.  But their influence has faded, perhaps in part because 
Bush, never a neocon, has switched sides since the dismissal of Rumsfeld 
and subsided into the arms of the FP pros in State and Defense. This is 
the real metamorphosis of this administration.

There are serious internal fights continuing, perhaps even including 
attempts to bypass the chain of command by the war party (Syria bombing, 
live nukes across the US, fake Hormuz video, etc.?).  and it is still 
possible that they may get their Iran war.  But the struggle is larger 
than within the mind of GWB.

Do you suppose Hedges learnt his anti-political conspiracism ("bad 
things happen because bad people are doing them, and they have to be 
found and stopped") at Harvard Divinity School?  It wasn't the vogue 
when I was there, admittedly some years before him; and he certainly 
wasn't listening to his instructors like Harvey Cox.  --CGE


> At 01:38 PM 1/14/2008, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>
>> Is Chris Hedges an optimist, a realist?  The article below should be 
>> read together with the comments that follow at Common Dreams: 
>>
>> http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/14/6354/
>> / Published on Monday, January 14, 2008 by // _TruthDig.com_ 
>> <http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080113_the_end_of_the_road_for_george_w_bush/>_
>> _/*T**he End of the Road for George W. Bush
>>
>> by Chris Hedges
>>
>> *The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by 
>> George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the 
>> Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots 
>> stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And 
>> this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.
>>
>> _ Bush stood in Jerusalem 
>> <http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/732692,010908bush.article%20>_, 
>> uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed platitudes about a peace 
>> settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted 
>> in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the 
>> wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished George Bush, 
>> increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into 
>> insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand up 
>> at the next president’s inauguration and screech “I’m melting! I’m 
>> melting!” as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I 
>> expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his 
>> life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude-cutting 
>> down brush with a chain saw.
>>
>> He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran, 
>> condemning more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul 
>> mate Ehud Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem 
>> and violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will 
>> soon be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of 
>> his life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just 
>> world he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal 
>> Court of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to 
>> face up to his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that 
>> infects the nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as 
>> well as the executive branch.
>>
>> World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to 
>> intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali 
>> Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States 
>> are of “no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are 
>> of benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that.”
>>
>> Bush will have flown from Israel to Palestine to Kuwait to Bahrain to 
>> the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to Egypt in search of a 
>> legacy, one that he hopes will lift up his name in history. But, 
>> isolated and deluded, he has yet to grasp that he and the United 
>> States are reviled and detested for our violence, arrogance and 
>> greed. The bands played on the tarmac. He was toasted at state 
>> dinners. But even our allies, including Kuwait and Egypt, know Bush 
>> is a danger to himself and others.
>>
>> He publicly displayed his inability to connect rhetoric with reality. 
>> He promised peace and cooperation, a new era, a Palestinian homeland. 
>> He promised solutions that will arise from negotiations that do not 
>> exist. Negotiations, in his eyes, are always about to begin. They 
>> were about to begin a year ago. They were about to begin with 
>> Annapolis. They are about to begin now. The messy issues between the 
>> Israelis and Palestinians that he and his administration have never 
>> attempted to address-the borders, the expanding Jewish settlements 
>> and outposts, the plight of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem-will 
>> all be seamlessly solved … one day. But the brutal reality of the 
>> Israeli occupation barrels forward. The Jewish settlements and 
>> outposts continue to be expanded. The crisis in Gaza, with the cuts 
>> in fuel and electricity, the deadly army incursions and airstrikes, 
>> has turned the world’s largest walled prison into a swamp of human 
>> misery. And huge new settlements, like _Har Homa_ 
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Har_Homa%20>__, continue to rise up on 
>> Palestinian soil.
>>
>> When Bush _met with the Palestinian leader _ 
>> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7180354.stm%20>__Mahmoud 
>> Abbas in Ramallah he blithely defended the patchwork of Israeli 
>> roadblocks that have turned the West Bank into a series of ringed 
>> Palestinian ghettos. The roadblocks, he told Abbas, are necessary for 
>> Israeli security. He announced that the 1949 Green Line, the borders 
>> established by the United Nations, would never be restored. There 
>> would be no discussion, he said, of the status of Jerusalem. And the 
>> plight of Palestinian refugees would be solved by setting up an 
>> international fund, meaning, of course, that none would ever return. 
>> In short, he offered an unequivocal endorsement of right-wing Israeli 
>> policy with not a murmur of dissent. And the Palestinians can either 
>> have it rammed down their throat or rot. Bush will be back, he has 
>> promised, in May to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of 
>> the Jewish state. Olmert, no doubt, will again be fulsome in his 
>> praise, which is probably what Bush’s trip to the Middle East is, at 
>> its core, really about. Bush desperately wants someone to pretend 
>> with him that he is an agent for peace and statesmanship. Olmert, who 
>> knows the callow American leader will give him everything he desires, 
>> is happy to oblige.
>>
>> But as Bush basks in the glow of his own fantasy, the suffering in 
>> Gaza, one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, along with the 
>> savage occupation of Iraq, continues to fuel widespread anger and 
>> rage. Bush has spent his time in office bolstering the Middle East’s 
>> most despotic regimes, including that of Gen. _Hosni Mubarak in 
>> Egypt_ <http://www.antiwar.com/ips/mekay.php?articleid=9042%20>__. He 
>> approved a $20-billion arms package for these states. He has backed 
>> efforts to crush mainstream Islamic groups that have electoral 
>> legitimacy and popular support. He has stood by as these regimes have 
>> stifled democratic dissent, and he has, with Israeli encouragement, 
>> isolated governments, even friendly governments, in the Middle East 
>> that raised feeble protests. But his day is past. There is open 
>> revolt. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians, and 
>> three-fourths of Israelis, do not believe Bush can affect events in 
>> the Palestinian territories.
>>
>> The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic 
>> and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of 
>> Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.
>>
>> “As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program … why should we 
>> isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?” Arab League Secretary-General 
>> _Abu Moussa told The Washington Post_ 
>> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/06/AR2008010601574.html%20>__.
>>
>> The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed 
>> ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 
>> attended December’s Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian 
>> president attended the just-completed /hajj/ 
>> <http://www.religioustolerance.org/isla1.htm>// _ _ 
>> <http://www.religioustolerance.org/isla1.htm>__in Mecca at the 
>> invitation of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring 
>> the resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979 
>> revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production 
>> of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have 
>> ignored Washington’s warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.
>>
>> It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and 
>> less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He 
>> bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be 
>> anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a 
>> tragic waste. But he at least has a life. There are tens of thousands 
>> of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that stand as 
>> stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem his time 
>> in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.
>>
>> /Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for 
>> nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is 
>> the author of “// _American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War 
>> on America._ 
>> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>__“/